By Donna Farhi, Yoga teacher and author When I first began formal Yoga Teaching Training, yoga postures were taught as a series of check-lists, with a point-by-point focus on each and every body part. While this Simon-Says approach of monkey see, monkey do led to a pretty successful replication of a picture, it seemed to bypass the internal process of feeling one’s own body experience and learning how to find one’s alignment from that felt experience. As the years went on I began to feel … [Read more...]
Restorative Yoga: Exploring Supported Child’s Pose In-depth
By Neal Ghoshal, Sacred Moves A little while ago I wrote an article on the eight essential principles of Restorative Yoga. Since then I've been continuing to delve deep into this beautiful practice. Deep rest is always calling! I'm happy to be sharing some more … and one of the most profoundly restful of the Restorative postures is Supported Child's Pose (Salamba Balasana). This is a posture which many find deliciously comforting and relaxing, perhaps because it tunes us into a time when we … [Read more...]
How I’m Using the Power of Kirtan to Drive Positive Change
by guest author Madi Das, Kirtan Shakti Courtesy of Integral Yoga® Magazine, Summer 2015 Most days, I go to my regular job, wearing my regular clothes, and I type regular things into my regular computer until it’s time to go home. My co-workers know me as Joe, that guy who has enough light banter to be social, but not so much as to get distracted from his typing. Joe is a good guy. Familiar. Dependable. You know the type. But on Tuesday nights, I trade my collared shirt and GAP slacks … [Read more...]
How to use Feldenkrais Technique to Free up Your Yoga {video}
by Kara-Leah Grant I first came across Feldenkrais in a yoga teacher taught by a friend in Wellington - Oli Wiles. He was smitten with the technique and skilfully wove it through his yoga teaching to great benefit. Now that I've been practicing yoga for almost two decades, I've also become very interested in how the body opens up, or doesn't open up. From my own experience I can see that it's not a simple equation of doing x, y, or z posture enough times and achieving your optimum range of … [Read more...]
How Yoga Kirtan Helped Me Find My True Voice and Share it With The World
By Premratna, Premratna Music If I try to imagine what the course of my life would have taken without yoga, I get an image of the movie Life of Pi: a small boat, huge swells, a tiger on board and a lot of fear. Yoga found me while I was doing my ‘big O.E.’; that phase of life where we are typically searching for adventure. I was no exception. In between hiking, skiing, singing and songwriting, I went to a yoga class at the gym in the Canadian Rockies where I was living and working. The … [Read more...]
How to Uncover the Treasures of the Chakras through Yoga
by Kara-Leah Grant Back in 2000 I was living with chronic back pain including agonising spasms, searing sciatica on the right side and a right foot that was half numb, meaning I walked with a limp. I had no faith in doctors because I'd had a spinal fusion eight years earlier (aged 16). I'd felt like like the doctors I'd seen then or since didn't understood my back or what was causing my pain. Yet I dutifully took myself off off to the Whistler Medical Clinic to get x-rays and see if … [Read more...]
Pranayama – It’s Your Medium to the ‘Super Soul’
by guest author L. Farrah Furtado India… the place that heightens the sense of penetration into another worldly reality, or the world beyond this one; a world within a world. I am currently in Mysore, India taking a pranayama, mudra and philosophy course at the Krishnamachar Sri Patanjala Yoga Shala with the famous Guruji, B. N. S. Iyengar. (Not to be confused with B. K. S. Iyengar). This entails taking an hour class with him every day and practicing pranayama six days a week for four … [Read more...]
This Moment is Enough: A Simple Practice for Peace
By guest author Mary O’Malley In this moment, I invite you into the peace and the ease that you long for. After your next in-breath, allow yourself a long, slow out-breath. Melt into your out-breath, letting any tension in your body melt with it. Now, on the next in-breath, tighten your muscles. Exaggerate the tension in your body and then say “ahh” as you melt again into your out-breath. Revel in the deliciousness of a deep out-breath coupled with the powerful healing sound of “ahh”. (You … [Read more...]
Grief: The Shadow Side of the Heart Chakra
by Kara-Leah Grant It's all good and well to do these wonderful heart-opening or heart-balancing yoga practices, but without a proper understanding of all aspects of the heart chakra, we can easily hit a wall of resistance that stops our practice cold. The heart chakra is about our ability to love - which requires that we open to the possibility of grief, sorrow and disappointment as well as the wonderful sensations of love, joy, fulfilment and compassion. Working with this kriya meant I was … [Read more...]
Maintaining a Regular Home Yoga Practice with the ‘Stop, Drop and Practice’ method
by Kara-Leah Grant, author of Forty Days of Yoga, Breaking down the barriers to a home yoga practice One of the techniques I suggest people use in Forty Days of Yoga is something I call Stop, Drop & Practice. It's been a core reason why I've had a consistent practice the last eight years, and it still works for me now. In fact, this is one of my most effective ways of ensuring that mat resistance doesn't de-rail my daily yoga practice and works great around children, or a busy life. Stop, … [Read more...]